Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2023

The Current Transcript for June 15, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

How to tackle growing belief in conspiracy theories

Guests: Bruce Anderson, Aegnus Bridgman, Carmen Celestini,

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, the former NATO supreme allied commander, Admiral James Stavridis, on what makes a great leader and what he thinks it will take to end the war in Ukraine. But first, far fetched conspiracies and why some Canadians are buying into them.

[Music: Theme]

Speaker 2: [sc]

VOICE 1: Forcing mass vaccination is killing our kids all over Canada...

VOICE 2: My senses tell me that the earth is flat.

VOICE 3: I don't believe in the Covid.

VOICE 4: The shift. I can feel it coming. Some call it the Great Awakening.

VOICE 5: The people at the World Economic Forum are saying a lie, and then every major politician says the exact same line. You know, you're not really...

MG: Those ideas may sound wild. Just to be clear, they're also false. But you might be surprised to hear just how many Canadians believe in conspiracy theories. A new poll reports, amongst other things, that 44% of respondents say they believe big events like wars, recessions and the outcomes of elections are controlled by small groups of people working in secret against us. Bruce Anderson is chairman of Abacus Data. It conducted the poll. Bruce, good morning.

BRUCE ANDERSON: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Why did you want to look into how Canadians feel about conspiracy theories now?

BRUCE ANDERSON: I think the most important reason for me personally is I've been in the polling business for more than 35 years, and over that period of time, I've noticed that with the way in which people consume news and information changing as much as it has, we've lost the ability to develop a kind of a common set of facts and understanding of events. And so that's been troubling on the one hand, because, you know, a common understanding of facts is important to making sensible solutions as a society. But at the same time, we've seen a rise in the ability of people to sell in theories into subsets of the population, that theories that kind of appeal to some of their more base urges, maybe their suspicions, their anxieties, and develop little subsets of our political culture that embrace things that aren't true, and that also compromises our ability to make reasonable decisions. And we wanted to do this research and put it out in a series of releases to draw some attention to this question, because it affects a lot of different parts of society.

MG: We'll talk about some of the specific conspiracy theories that you did the polling on in a moment. But why did you choose those ones? Not, you know, the Earth is flat or Elvis lives in orange jail or something like that.

BRUCE ANDERSON: Well, we're not done with our releases yet. In fact, we are going to put out a release that shows how many people believe that the royal family killed Princess Diana, that the moon landing was a hoax. We looked at a lot of different things, but we started by breaking them down. In the first release that we put out was really how many people say, I'm not sure I can trust government accounts of events. I'm not sure I can trust the media. And those numbers approached 50%. And so it's telling us that there is a hesitancy to accept institutional forms of information. And then we started with the theories that relate to there are secret societies like the World Economic Forum that are trying to control my destiny. The Replacement Theory one. Yesterday's release was about COVID related matters, and we've got some on racism and some on other theories as well to come.

MG: Let me ask you about the great replacement theory. As it's known, 37% of those polled believe that there's a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native born Canadians with immigrants who agree with their political views. What do you read into that? 37% of those polled.

BRUCE ANDERSON: Well, we used the question formulation that was used, I think, in the United States because we wanted to do an apples to apples comparison, even though I found the question a little bit kind of oblique in some respects. But, you know, it's a it's a shockingly high number. It's similar, frankly, to the numbers that I think I saw in the United States. We'll put out something that shows these comparisons again in the days to come. But it does suggest to me that the susceptibility to believe that there are forces that are putting other people's interests or values or aspirations ahead of your own is something that's not a small feature of our political culture now. It's a larger and larger feature. And obviously we see some stakeholders in politics who are trying to make a meal of it. And so those things work in symbiosis that people have these feelings and politicians identify and and echo them back and that that makes them even a bigger risk in terms of being able to form a consensus.

MG: You mentioned vaccines. 11% of those polled believe that secret chips have been included in the vaccines to control our behaviour. 9% of those polled believe that COVID was caused by 5G and other wireless technologies. What do you make of that?

BRUCE ANDERSON: You know, one of the things that we did in this series of releases is we use the percentages, but we also translated them into how many millions of Canadians that represents. Because sometimes you can look at percentages, or at least I've kind of observed this with some polls, is that people say, well, it's only 9%, which means that 91% don't believe that. On the other hand, when you're talking about roughly 3 million adults believing that the rollout of 5G caused COVID, it's not hard to understand anymore why there are so many people who are anti-vax. It's not that most people didn't take the vaccination, but we do. We did notice a huge amount of friction as we got closer to that 90% threshold of adults who were vaccinated. And so when I look at these numbers, I kind of go, okay, well, that last 10% is going to be very hard to get because they do not accept the basic science and the evidence around COVID. And maybe more importantly, they somehow managed to believe that the entire world, all the governments that all of the medical authorities, all of the news organisations that covered COVID somehow either missed the 5G rollout effect or decided to cover it up. And that's a challenge for media and governments and all kinds of aspects of civil society as well.

MG: Where is the line between scepticism and buying into a conspiracy theory? You mentioned the World Economic Forum. 20% of those polled agree that this is some sort of group of global elites with a secretive strategy to impose their ideas on the world. This is a conference that's attended by world leaders like the former prime minister, Stephen Harper, but also billionaires. And the chairman has talked about, you know, creating a strategy to help. Influence, if I can put it that way. Government policies, people might be sceptical about that. But what's the line between scepticism and believing that this is a group that's going to control your life?

BRUCE ANDERSON: It's blurry. And, you know, so one of the reasons we included questions, we didn't include the obvious one, but one of the reasons we included the moon landing a hoax, 911 an inside job, that sort of thing, is we want to understand better what causes somebody to believe. Multiple of these theories, more than one or two or three of these theories but six of the 12, let's say that we tested. And it's clear that there's a there's a certain portion of the belief that is tied to a storytelling that they've heard. And some portion of the belief is tied to anxieties that they feel and the desire that people manifest sometime to blame somebody else for something that's not going the way that they would like in their lives. And we also want to untangle the question of what role does certain aspects of the media environment play? You know, there are some platforms that like Fox News which traffic in conspiracy theories because they see the business opportunity in it, I guess is the way I would put it. And so are these people buying into this because they reject all media information? No, it's because they consume some of the media information that's coming their way and they consume it in larger and increasing and more isolated and more singular ways. And, you know, I'm not here to argue that people shouldn't be able to put whatever they want to say on the news platforms that they own, although I think there's some important questions there. I'm saying here's the effect of some of it.

MG: There's a business opportunity. There's also a political opportunity for many people. And so I guess just finally, what happens if we don't have that that set of common facts that we all believe in? What happens if those institutions that help shape those facts are undermined?

BRUCE ANDERSON: I don't think that we, I don't think we know, but I think we know it won't be good. We're running into situations where people don't know some of the basic facts about how our society work, what government is or isn't responsible for what matters to the economy. And they get drawn instead towards these finger pointing or blame placing theories. And they get, they become susceptible to really bad public policy ideas. And I do see politicians who are trying to make a meal out of that, who are basically talking about how we need to mistrust the institutions. And I think it's reckless and dangerous for the future of of the country and of society and of our ability to solve problems.

MG: Lots to think about here. Bruce, thank you very much.

BRUCE ANDERSON: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Bruce Anderson is the chairman of Abacus Data. Joining me now are two researchers who study conspiracy theories and how they spread. Aengus Bridgman is director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory, based out of McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy and the University of Toronto's Munk School. And Carmen Celestini is an instructor at the University of Waterloo and a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Religion at Queen's University who researches conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. Good morning to you both.

GUESTS: Good morning. Good morning.

MG: Carmen, how concerned should we be about the results of this survey again? I think, you know, surprisingly high numbers to some people, those believing in secret cabals and chips in vaccines. Is this alarming to you?

CARMEN CELESTINI: I think that is something that we should have been aware of. It's been decades where there has been this control and this idea and spreading of information about distrust in our institutions and as a society. We have dismissed that for quite some time, and we're now seeing the ramifications of that dismissal. We have to take into consideration that our lives were and social lives. We're all on social media. And if people were searching for answers during their fears and this perpetual sense of disaster that we've had for the last couple of years globally, people turn to answers that are human made for the cause of these disasters. And, you know, is that conspiracy theory that we consider something called a super conspiracy, where there is interlocking hierarchical conspiracy theories that link together to define our world and that is articulated politically. And it can lead to populism and to policies that resolve these senses of injustice that people have that will harm the greater good of society.

MG: Aengus, how does what you've heard from Bruce and what we're talking about now square with the research you've been doing on the spread of conspiracy theories online in particular?

CARMEN CELESTINI: Yes. So really interesting to hear him talk a little bit more through the survey results. I think that the numbers aren't that far off and sort of we found in our own polling and our own evaluation of social media data. One thing I just I want to caveat about this and I think is really important is that there's a lot of measurement error in these surveys. So when we say something like, you know, 10% or 30% say and believe that they use microchips to track and affect people's behaviour, I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that four million Canadians literally believe that that could be an expression of some underlying malaise, some underlying distrust. They look at that and they go, Oh yeah, like I'm not super comfortable with vaccines, and so I'm going to project that on there. So I think I think we just need to be cautious about sort of saying four million Canadians believe something like that.

MG: Well, I was going to think that said, Carmen talked about, you know, social media and what we've all been through in the last couple of years. What would even lead people to the place where they might start to believe that? They might start to believe that there's some secret cabal, as they say, that controls the outcome of elections?

CARMEN CELESTINI: Yes, there's a number of different factors. I think an important thing to note here is that conspiracy theories are not new. There's a long history of them. However, social media does seem to have severely aggravated sort of their spread and their entrenchment in sort of the segment of the population. So what we see is people who use social media at greater volume, use many platforms who spend a lot of time sort of in communities online, are much more predisposed to being exposed to and ultimately believing in misinformation, like some of the things being pulled out here.

MG: And so I'll bring Carmen back in in a moment. But Angus, to you, what is the political impact of these sorts of theories gaining hold?

CARMEN CELESTINI: So, yeah, one of the one of the really interesting things about this population that has sort of what I would say a conspiratorial mindset is that they are incredibly politically motivated in a Canadian context. So when we look at which groups in in Canada today are the most likely to engage in sort of costly political action, that is to say protests, signing up for party membership memberships, even. There's a dollar cost to that. It's these people. This is where in some ways the action is. You're not, you know, people who are generally trustful of government, trustful of the media, think that, yeah, you know, we can tweak public policy a little bit. They're not as energised in terms of in terms of actual political participation. And the collective effect of this is that this relatively small number of Canadians can really drive the national conversation and can sort of, for example, in a leadership race, really push one candidate to the top. We see this in terms of like turning up to vote, turning out to protest, what issues get talked about. It is it's largely a result of sort of the hyper motivated and the people are hyper motivated.

MG: Given that, Carmen, how important is it from your perspective not to simply dismiss this as fringe thinking, but as you see the results of the survey and again, you can quibble about the methodology, but to take what's happening seriously.

CARMEN CELESTINI: We have to take it seriously. We see some political leaders actually engaging in these conspiracy theories. We see it as part of their platform. We see sort of subtle hints to some of these ideas. So a lot of white nationalists, a lot of populists will use means that talk about immigration rather than openly discussing their racist ideologies or the great replacement conspiracy theory. And these things can motivate people. And political leaders can say, here is the problem and we can be the solution for that. And so people are, as Angus said, very much motivated into solving the issues as they see them as being injustices. This can affect our political system and our society as a whole with this policy.

MG: Is there is it possible to to just put a snapshot out of what sort of person would be drawn to conspiracy theories, Carmen?

CARMEN CELESTINI: Well, I think that what we're seeing here is that we've had this perpetual sense of disaster. And when people are afraid, they try to find answers to those things. And so we're moving here in emotion where people are seeking answers because they're afraid of losing a job. Inflation that we're dealing with right now, political chaos. We add in some type of senses of a cult, in some type of heterodox religion. And we see people seeking solutions. And when they do that, they start believing these conspiracy theories. It might start off very simply thinking about, you know, I don't have a job. What is the reason for that? It could lead to looking at immigration policies. Or it could be I just trusted vaccines prior to COVID and now I'm linking this to these other ideas.

MG: But how does that happen? How does somebody go from being curious about something they read online or being frustrated to believing in that idea of the great replacement theory that there is some sort of conspiracy to replace the white race with immigrants that would be more responsive to a specific. Political ideology, for example.

CARMEN CELESTINI: Well, if you do not believe in or trust legacy media, you can turn to alternative media sites. And we can see that there's a cohesive message being put out there on social media, on some news networks, on online zines. We see these ideas being spread. And when you have a cohesive message coming from you, from different angles, it starts being true. You also start creating social groups online and in real life that share your world view, and it becomes like an open envelope. I know that's an old adage, but it really is. You might investigate something about vaccines, have a fear about it, and it starts spreading and connecting to other conspiracy theories and providing answers for the things that you feel afraid of or perceive as being an injustice.

MG: Aengus What do you see as the role of social media in this?

CARMEN CELESTINI: Yeah. So maybe also I could just answer the question. I think there's a tendency to really want to think that there's a certain type of person that falls into this trap. You know, I couldn't follow this trap. I don't have any erroneous beliefs. But in fact, what survey data shows is that, yes, there are some patterns, but in general, anyone, anyone can come to believe something erroneously. And I don't think we should be sort of absolutely confident in our own factual understanding of the world. And so I think that that's something that often gets lost in here when we talk about sort of misinformation and perceptions of misinformation. What we what we see is that people have very different understandings of what that is. And so somebody who sort of has some of these beliefs is going to think that, oh, no, this this programme or other material is itself misinformation. So, you know, they're not engaging in like mental processes that are vastly different. They're they're finding networks, they're finding communities, and they're sharing ideas and discussing and reinforcing each other's ideas. And ultimately, that leads to a different factual understanding. We know that social media has a large role to play in this. We know that there are sort of echo chambers that are constructed. We know that in particular, sort of many communities around COVID 19 were driven off sort of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube to the slightly more aggressive moderation policies that they went to the communities that where they are much stronger echo chambers we can think of like rumble or we can think of Telegram channel, where people are really surrounded by an insular view of the world. So social media has a large role to play, but these are fundamentally social dynamics and that you, me and everyone listening here are to the programme are susceptible to. And so we shouldn't think of people who are conspiratorial mindset as completely different, engaging and completely abnormal behaviour.

MG: Carmen how do you go about addressing that? Then in part, as Bruce said, if you have a lack of a common set of facts, but also. A real questioning of the value of the institutions that help, you know, present, reinforce, shape those facts. How do you how do you turn that around?

CARMEN CELESTINI: Well, I think this is something that we can't look at as just as one nation, as Canada approaching, I think, because there are a lack of borders on the Internet. This has to be something that the globalised response to disinformation, to building transparency and trust in our institutions once again. But I think we have to realise that, you know, it's not going to be an easy shift, but it does. It is something important that we have to work on together. We also need to learn how to have conversations again. You know, there's a very significant cleavage in belief systems and in political systems, and people are not engaging. They're, you know, approaching things in a conversation that causes someone to be defensive by name calling or attacking or degrading. And so I think we often need to learn how to bridge that gap as a society.

MG: Can you just take a minute to talk about how you would do that on an individual level? You could imagine that there are people who are listening, who have friends, family in their lives who might believe in some of these ideas.

CARMEN CELESTINI: Well, one of the pressures I engage with many people who are on the opposite political side and believe in conspiracy theories. And really, rather than trying to go head to head and, you know, peer to peer review, peer to review. I try to approach it more as a person to person. Remember what those people mean to you and why you care about them and talk about your own emotions. People who believe in conspiracy theories tend to engage with fear. And so if you can talk about your own sort of fears, your own sort of emotions, and connect on a human basis, rather than focussing on details of conspiracy theories and opening up and bridging that social divide between individuals.

MG: Aengus, how do we systemically go about responding to the spread of conspiracy theories?

CARMEN CELESTINI: Yeah, this is systemic, is incredibly challenging. I think that there's some solutions regarding sort of tweaking algorithms and adjusting moderation policies on social media platforms. But the thing actually I really want to emphasise over and over again is that, you know, I spent a lot of time in these communities. I listen to what they say. I, I try to understand sort of their perspective. And, and what can often happen is that an expert or a media outlet can produce a story that does get something wrong. We're human, that happens. And we can't completely eliminate that. But being honest and forthright about it and being as best as good as we can at our job of public communication and making sure that we we aren't making claims that extend beyond sort of what our research or what our understanding of the world is goes a long way in terms of not giving these communities fuel for the fire. That is, oh, look, these experts consistently get things wrong. They consistently mislead. They are consistently against us. And so that's, I think, something that just really needs to be taken to heart more systemically. Of course, there's there's there's some policy levers that can be that can be pulled here. We know, given that sort of the echo chamber effects on our social media platforms, we know that that has contributed in a meaningful way to increased polarisation and increased conspiratorial mindset. And there's definitely some good action that can be taken there and is being taken and some action is being taken globally right now.

MG: We just have a few seconds left. Are you convinced, Aengus, that the horses out of the barn that you talk about the fire, that the fire hasn't already spread and the institutions are already, you know, jeopardised?

CARMEN CELESTINI: I think we need to accept a level of conspiratorial mindset in society. And when I say accept, I mean that's just that's going to be the reality. People have different factual interpretations of the world. What we don't want is a situation where coming out of an election, people are deeply distrustful of the result. They start to mistrust the very core democratic institutions. And so the horse is out the barn insofar as the trust, the distrust is there. But I don't think we're in an unrecoverable situation.

MG: Aengus, good to speak with you. Thank you very much. Thank you. And Carmen, thanks so much.

CARMEN CELESTINI: Thank you.

MG: Aengus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory, based out of McGill University and the University of Toronto. And Carmen Celestini is an instructor at the University of Waterloo, and she studies conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. Well, coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

There's this famous scene in The Godfather where Don Corleone is chastising his errant and hotheaded son, Santino, and he says to him, Don't make the mistake of hating your enemies it clouds your judgement.

MG: Former NATO's supreme allied commander, Admiral James Stavridis, on what it takes to be a great leader, what he has seen when it comes to leadership and the war in Ukraine and how he believes as somebody who knows how Naito works, that war might end. That's coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

Back To Top »

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis on what makes a great leader

Guests: Admiral James Stavridis

MG: Hi. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

We defend our freedom to live, to lot of sound on our land. We are fighting Russia, which brings horrible silence with its bombs. The dead silence. Feel the silence with your music still today to tell our story. Tell the truth about the war on your social networks, on TV. Support us in any way you can, any but not silence and then peaceful, calm.

MG: Ukraine's president, Vladimir Zelensky, made that passionate plea to the world at the Grammy Awards in April. He has been visible and vocal since the start of Russia's invasion, speaking to world leaders, to his troops and to his people. And he's become the face of Ukraine's determined resistance to Russia. Admiral James Stavridis has been watching Zelensky's sharp turn from actor to president. Sorry, this is a former NATO supreme allied commander and he examines leadership in times of war in his new book To Risk It All nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision. Admiral Stavridis, good morning.

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: Good morning, Matt. Good to be with you.

MG: Glad to have you here. What are when you take a look at what President Zelensky has accomplished over the course of this war, what are some of the leadership traits that you see in him?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: I'll give you a three that just really stand out. The first is pure physical courage. He puts himself at risk. He goes to the front lines. He stays in his country after the invasion. When he was asked if he needed a ride to get out of the country by the United States, we wanted him initially to come out of the country, set up a government in exile like Charles de Gaulle did during the Second World War. President Zelensky said, I don't need a ride. I need more ammunition. So pure physical courage. I think. Number two, you touched on it already. He's he's a brilliant speaker, a brilliant, performative artist, I think reminiscent of Winston Churchill and his ability to truly inspire in the spoken word, really quite remarkable. And third and finally at heart. Every great leader knows that, you know, there's going to be a time when that bolder, like Sisyphus rolls back down on top of you. And it happens for everybody, every leader. You need to be resilient. And boy, it's hard to imagine a leader who has demonstrated more resilience than Volodymyr Zelensky. Those are three pretty good qualities in a leader.

MG: How surprised are you in the way that he's led his country over the course of this war?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: I'm very surprised. There's nothing in his, if you will, biography, nothing in his activities leading up to this moment that would have given at least outside observers a sense that he would rise again to this almost Churchillian level. I was not surprised, Matt, at the military performance of his troops. I commanded Ukrainians in combat. They deployed as partners to NATO's when the U.S. and Canada and all of us were in Afghanistan. So I know how how professional and determined these Ukrainian troops are. But Zelinsky as a leader was a very pleasant surprise to me. And I think I'll put it this way in nautical terms if I can. If he was the captain of the ship, I would like to be a crew member. He is a very impressive leader.

MG: You're an historian of warfare. And I wonder how important it is from your perspective for military leaders to understand the history of war in past campaigns, given what they might find themselves in in that moment?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: Well, I think it's essential, and I think that's true for any profession, be it medicine or law or journalism. You have to know the history, the legacy and and use that to perform better when you hit the point of real crisis. And in the book that you mentioned a moment ago, the risk at all nine conflicts and the crucible of decision. The idea the book was to pick out nine stories of individuals who had make decisions under extreme stress in combat scenarios. I think that's an example of how you can mine this extraordinary trove of material of those who have gone before and by the way, apply it not just in the military sphere, but I think it applies across many, many different spheres. Looking to the past and learning and reading is part of any any leader's toolkit.

MG: How did that practise help you when you were the NATO's supreme allied commander?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: Well, it's kind of right there in the title writes Supreme Allied Commander. The first supreme allied commander was Dwight Eisenhower. And there were many between him and I, 60. I was the 16th Supreme Allied Commander, but I was able to go back through the pantheon of my predecessors and look at what they brought to the table in their operational skill sets. And so just to hold with President Eisenhower, the first supreme allied commander, what I saw was someone who could sublimate his ego and be a team builder across all these different cultures and nations and languages. To do that requires not a leader who thinks of himself or herself as supreme, but a leader who really wants to emphasise the word allied in that title. That's what I learnt from Eisenhower, for example.

MG: That I mean, there's an inherent contradiction and conflict in that because you're trying to bring your allies in, but in many ways the buck stops with you.

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: Yeah, it's a great point. And the way I would answer it is good leaders know to let everything bubble up to them. But they also know when you have to make a decision, you make it. And where I've failed on occasion as a leader is spending too much time on the team building and listening side and occasionally missing a turn where I should have said, okay, enough. It's time. As we say in the Navy, it's time to cut some steel. Meaning, at some point you really got to start executing. And so that's something that some of my predecessors did very well. Others did less well. I learnt from watching them when it became time to actually make a decision.

MG: What did you learn about leadership from The Godfather.

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: To one of my favourite books? And I often say it's one of the great books of leadership. What I learnt from The Godfather. One particular point is trying to keep emotion out of decision making. And there's this famous scene in The Godfather where Don Corleone is chastising his errant and hotheaded son, Santino, and he says to him, Don't make the mistake of hating your enemies. It clouds your judgement. Boy, is that a powerful line. And so, you know, we're all emotional, we all have personalities. But I think good leaders are capable of parking some of that untoward emotion at the door and making sensible analytic decisions. That's one thing I learnt from The Godfather.

MG: Even in the the cut and thrust of combat.

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: Even in the cut and thrust of combat. And that may sound counterintuitive to those who haven't been there, but the real skill, the eye of the tiger, if you will, is to is to calm yourself, to force time, to slow down, if you will. And the only way to do that is to try and park some of the emotion at the door.

MG: One of the things you write about in the book when it comes to mistakes and decision making is belief bias. How is that playing out, do you think, in this war right now that Russia has launched in Ukraine?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: Yeah, well, let's start on the Russian side of this thing where Putin has deeply miscalculated the professionalism of the Ukrainian armed forces, the tenacity of Vladimir Zelinsky personally, and the unity of the West. He's really had a performance bias that told him everyone would be afraid of him. He would be able to simply roll over the Ukrainians. It's a pretty good example of a leader who has to later himself because that intelligence undoubtedly was available. Russia knows a lot about what goes on in Ukraine. Believe me, it's extremely well surveilled country from Moscow. But Putin's mental bias clearly caused him to underestimate his opponents very, very significantly. I think that's been the most striking example of that kind of bias in this war.

MG: What about from the Ukrainian side?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: I think on the Ukrainian side, the the bias they have brought to this is one of a sense that Russia would never go this far. You'll recall in the days leading up to the war, there was a lot of happy talk out of TV, including some from President Zelensky saying to us, oh, don't worry, we know the Russians. They're not going to actually attack. Or if they do, it'll be, you know, kind of confined to the areas in the southeast where they already exist. I think the Ukrainians had a tendency that's common and human nature to think that tomorrow is going to look a lot like today, only maybe just a little bit different. They underestimated and had a bias that Russia would not launch a sweeping blitzkrieg attack, even though they witnessed the build up of that attack all around their borders. It was, you know, clearly telegraphed yet the Russians were saying, oh, no, we're we're just doing exercises. We're not actually going to attack. And I think to some degree the Ukrainians bought into that. So they learnt a bitter lesson in that regard.

MG: Part of the title of this book is about risk to risk at all. How would you define the risk for President Zelensky and for President Putin that's been brought on by this war?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: Yeah, look, let's start with president. Putin and I think we are going to see his name should be economically diminished as a result of sanctions that will probably remain in place for a very long time unless he improbably reverses course. So economic, I think it's not too strong a word to say. Disaster is ahead. Secondly, huge loss of life. I mean, to put this in context, your nation, my nation, we suffered grievously in these forever wars in 20 years of war. However, the United States had 7000 killed in action in four months of war. Putin has had reliably 20,000 killed in action. So this is a staggering toll on his military. And that's before you get to a thousand tanks destroyed, a thousand artillery pieces. The flagship of the Black Sea is now a coral reef at the bottom of the Black Sea with 500 sailors killed. That's a real loss to his military capability. And then finally, diplomatically, he's risked the reputation of his country and it's going to be significantly damaged in major parts of the world. So that's the risk. And it's hard to see at this point how Putin can reverse course sufficiently to avoid that risk. On the other side of the line, on the Ukrainian side, the risks are quite evident. It's the potential subjugation, destruction of their country, falling victim to vicious war crimes. Many of those risks have come true already as usual. War is a is a losing game on both sides of that firing line.

MG: What about for President Biden? There is increasing commentary in the United States that he needs to tell people what the end game is. The United States is deeply involved in this billions of dollars worth of aid and armaments heading to Ukraine. What's the risk for President Biden in this?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: I think the biggest risk for him would be if the Ukrainian effort collapsed and Putin suddenly got his military's act in gear and the Russians come roaring back. I think that would have echoes of the the very difficult withdrawal from Afghanistan. It would touch on competence of the administration already shaken by that withdrawal from Afghanistan. So President Biden's greatest risk would be a collapse of Ukraine. Fortunately for President Biden, I don't think that's in the cards at this point. The second risk for President Biden is that it is related to the first one is if the country begins to simply tire of spending billions of dollars, that could lead to the first risk manifesting itself if the aid to Ukraine tapered off and Putin were able to accelerate. Bottom line, though, this is an issue here in the you know, the lower 48, so to speak. This is an issue in the United States where even Nancy Pelosi on the left wing and Mitch McConnell on the right wing are in very sincere agreement. I don't see the US falling off this effort and to close on this. I would say that while it is very expensive and it is billions of dollars compared to what we spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's not as extreme a cost. And above all, our troops are dying over there the way they were during the Forever War. So bottom line, I think there'll be a reasonable level of support for Ukraine from the United States, and then it'll be up to other nations to make those kind of decisions.

MG: Do you think it's a proxy war against Russia?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: I don't. I think of this as helping a fellow democracy against an invasion by a neighbour who is a bully and a tyrant. I think that's different, in my view, than a proxy war right now.

MG: As the war grinds on in the Black Sea port of Odessa, there are tons of Ukrainian grain. There's there's ships that are waiting to sail out with food that could help feed the world. And in the absence of that, as we've talked about on this programme, starvation is looming. You spent your military life in the U.S. Navy. What would you do?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: I would take a page from history. We were talking about that earlier. I go back to the mid 1980s and look at Operation Earnest Will, which was a convoy operation in which the United States flagged tankers, principally Kuwaiti tankers, and drove them in and out of the Arabian Gulf because Iran was trying to choke off the Strait of Hormuz. And so we parked destroyer, a cruiser, a frigate alongside these big tankers, and drove them in and out, protected them and effectively opened the Strait of Hormuz. We could do that again. And it could be the United States could choose to do this. It could be a NATO mission. It could be a United Nations mission. I could see a variety of ways to do it. Job one, of course, will be to clear the mines, both Ukrainian and Russian, that are blocking that port. We have the technology to do that. So I would recommend to the president, I've done this in writing that a couple of places, mine clearance set up an international mission humanitarian corridor at sea. It would go through international waters and Ukrainian waters. Russia would not have any legal standing to attack those convoys. Nor do I think they would, given the optics of doing so.

MG: Why don't you think they would? Given how much Russia has poured into securing the part of Ukraine that has prevented that grain from leaving?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: It's an arguable proposition and it would not be without risk of Russia attacking. But if that's a U.S. cruiser parked alongside, I find it unlikely. My assessment that Russia would attack a U.S. warship, just for starters. Our ships are quite capable of defending themselves in ways that would attract the Black Sea fleet. And secondly, I don't think Putin is looking to enter into a significant war with the United States or with NATO's. Could he still do it? Possibly. Could he try and do it in a more surreptitious way? Perhaps, however, again, it would. These are humanitarian missions moving grain to the world. I think that's a very bad fact pattern for Russia. And I think also they would be militarily overmatched by the U.S. Navy.

MG: You write in the book, there's a saying in north Florida, sometimes you got to know the difference between quitting and getting beat. What does that mean in the context of war?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: Yeah, it means that there are times when you are going to lose and you you give it your all in until you hit that point, and then you have to take the best outcome you possibly can.

MG: So when the United States made that chaotic departure from Afghanistan last summer, was the U.S. quitting or was it getting beat?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: I think we were quitting in that one. And here again, I want to make a different kind of distinction, which is that if we had chosen to remain there longer with the very small footprint of troops who were there at that point, I think we could have had at least a more orderly departure and potentially over time had a better outcome. And in here, I'll just give you some numbers to go with that. When I commanded that mission, including very brave soldiers from Canada, when I commanded that mission, there were 150,000 allied troops there, about 100,000 U.S., 50,000 from 50 other nations. And by the time we decided to peremptorily withdraw everybody last August, we were down total to about 10,000 troops. So we'd gone from 150,000 down to 10,000 at that point. We quit. We walked away. And we did it in a manner that led to the debacle that you saw. It was not our finest hour.

MG: Let me just ask you a couple of final things before I let you go. One is and this is as the former NATO supreme allied commander, when you take a look at that war right now in Ukraine, how does this end? Do you think there is, again, a stream of commentary coming out from prominent people in the United States and elsewhere saying that Ukraine needs to be willing to sacrifice territory, that it's lost at the very least, rolling it back borders back to what it was on the 24th of February, or perhaps even losing more territory. And you've heard President Zelensky say, absolutely not, we will not sacrifice an inch of territory. Given that, how does this end?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: First, I'll give you three words which are I don't know. And anybody who tells you they know doesn't, because war is the most unpredictable of human activities. So with that is a stipulation. I'll give you my best case, if you will. Main case. I think there is a two in three chance the ending will look something like this. Russia will consolidate its gains along that southeastern corridor and. Firmly control that stretch of land that runs from Russia down to Crimea. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, will have fought the Russians more or less to a standstill, and they'll be a highly militarised, if you will, line of demarcation between these two forces. And I think at that point, you have room for a negotiation that's probably late this year when both sides are suffering from continuing combat fatigue and many more losses. And I think that negotiation will end up looking a bit matte like the Korean War ended, which is to say it never ended. It's still a state of war. There is a highly militarised line between North and South Korea. There are occasional flare ups back and forth. It's a static situation. I think that's how it comes out. And I'll I'll close on this by saying everyone will hate that deal. Putin will hate it because despite what he will say at the time, he's failed. His objective was to conquer the entire country. He boasted about it. He said Kiev will fall in 48 hours. Not exactly. So Putin won't like this deal because he will have failed as the Lynskey won't like the deal because to get to that state of static administration between the two sides, he will perhaps have to acquiesce in some of this in that territorial shift, if you will, and the West will hate it, because to get the deal, we're probably going to have to reduce the sanctions somewhat. It'll be a deal that everyone hates, but it will probably end up with Putin in control of about 15% of pre-war Ukraine pre 2014.

MG: Last question just briefly, I guess is is this is a pretty dangerous world that we live in right now. What's the thing that keeps you up at night?

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: This may or may not surprise you, but it's kind of the dog that hasn't barked yet in this conflict. And it's looming out there. It's a looming tower and it's cyber and cyber security and massive cyber attacks. We're so dependent in our finance or transportation or medical. Our food chain, our fuel lines. Everything, of course, runs on the Internet of Things. US, China, Russia, some other nations have significant capability as well. A massive cyber attack is something we are less well prepared for than I think we should be.

MG: We'll leave it on that ominous note. It's a real pleasure to talk to you, Admiral. Thank you very much.

ADMIRAL STAVRIDIS: Matt, thank you.

MG: Take care. Bye. Admiral James Stavridis is a former NATO supreme allied commander. His new book is To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision. That's the current for this Wednesday Qs. Up next on CBC Radio One. But we leave you with something we could all use in a day like today, little ABBA. Today is the anniversary of Abba's second album, Waterloo, entering the UK charts for the first time. The album's title track won ABBA the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974, and of course, Waterloo talks about the Battle of Waterloo, which ended France's push to dominate Europe and destroyed Napoleon's imperial power forever. You could, I suppose, try and link that with a conversation about military leadership. Or you could just turn it up and dance. I Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Wednesday June 15, 2022 Full Transcript

More Stories Like This